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Here is the new eclipse.org homepage prototype. There are 4 key sections to the page. (Please Note not all the links work) 1. Download Section - Goal here is to make it easier for users to download eclipse. 2. I Use eclipse for - this is the main page presentation of the Pillars idea we sent around earlier. We've come up with some categories that we think will hit the biggest audiences. 3. Spotlight / Annoucements Section - Here we can outline some of the bigger things going on in the eco system such as EclipseCon or the Europa / Callisto releases, etc. The Announcements section is what we currently call the Foundation News. 4. News Section - We have placed the new and updated plugin feed from EPIC on the homepage as well as moved the community news here. Please leave us your feedback on the changes!
One thing i forgot to mention was that the icons in the Use eclipse for... section are just place holders at this time. They will be changed later on, check out bug 157520 if you'd like to help out with that!
Awesome! I think this will improve first time users experience a lot, especially the Download button and the "I use Eclipse for" section. Some thing worth thinking about: - How about opening off-site links in a separate window? - The section between the "Use Eclipse for..." and "Announcements" has no title, which is a bit distracting. - Why does the menu bar have a title("Eclipse.org navigtion")? - How about highlighting the key words in the mission statement by making them bold?
I'm not so fond of it. It seems inconsistent not to have a navigation bar like every other page already has. The download button seems overly big and too in your face; what's wrong with the download tab? The brightly colored icons don't seem to go with the nice skin color and I don't know how these categories would get me to EMF for example. It seems kind of too platform centric rather than a central place for all projects...
I concur with Ed's comments. Also, please don't remove the technical articles section.
(In reply to comment #4) > I concur with Ed's comments. Also, please don't remove the technical articles > section. > The articles section on the right hand side will include new technical articles and the articles are getting a new home under the resources section which will be a top level nav.
Forgot to mention that I think the pillars bar is a great idea, and would be quite useful, especially for people new to Eclipse to get an idea what Eclipse can be used for.
I have one problem with the old page: the navigation on the left is not at all obvious for me. Sometimes things appear and disappear depending on where you are. How much is the layout separated from the actual content? Is it like a wiki, where page providers provide that data and the framework puts it in context? There are still some sites in the old style. I personally believe very much in separation of content and layout. If this is done well, the overall experience can become great. If it depends on the maintainer of the sub pages to adopt the any changes in style, the webpage will always look like patchwork... But I like the new start page :-)
I agree with Ed's comments - it's too platform centric. The big button advising users to download eclipse 3.2 doesn't make it immediately evident to users how to obtain downloads for additional functionality beyond the SDK.
(In reply to comment #3) > I'm not so fond of it. It seems inconsistent not to have a navigation bar like > every other page already has. The current homepage nav has 4 items. Commiters, Bugs, Newsgroups, Articles. and takes up over 150 pixels worth of valuable real estate on the page that is much better used for other things. As for the lack it these items, Commiters will have a top level menu item now, Bugs is over on the right hand side. Newsgroups will be handled by the different I use eclipse for categories, and each project will have a newsgroup listed which seems like a much more viable resource. Articles is being roled into the new top level resources section. >The download button seems overly big and too in your face; what's wrong with the download tab? The download button will simply download Eclipse SDK no muss no fuss, this seems like a good thing to me at least, check out getfirefox.com and use there download button. No page changes we'll detect platform and bam here your download! > The brightly colored icons don't seem to go with the nice skin color and I don't know how these categories would get me to EMF for example. It seems kind of too platform centric rather than a central place for all projects... IMO if your looking for EMF then more then likely you know that it stands for (Eclipse Modeling Framework) and likely you would choose application frameworks. Keep in mind that alot of attention that were giving to these pages are for people / users that are new to eclipse.
(In reply to comment #8) > The big button advising users to download eclipse 3.2 doesn't make it > immediately evident to users how to obtain downloads for additional > functionality beyond the SDK. How about having something like a pie chart logo as a download button with Eclipse (the platform) in the middle and all top level projects surrounding this core?
Created attachment 50599 [details] Download logo pie chart This is a (every rough) sample of the pie chart I just mentioned.
(In reply to comment #10) > How about having something like a pie chart logo as a download button with > Eclipse (the platform) in the middle and all top level projects surrounding > this core? There's something about this idea that I like. D.
Does it make sense to link to the screenshots page from the homepage? http://www.eclipse.org/screenshots
(In reply to comment #13) > Does it make sense to link to the screenshots page from the homepage? The thumbnails in the upper right should like to the screenshots page. (In reply to comment #11) > This is a (every rough) sample of the pie chart I just mentioned. I think the problem is that, as you can see, the button will become very large to be usable at all. The next problem is that's impossible to make it a download button. What happens if you download GEF? Exactly, nothing, you just get a zip file gef-somthing that is you wonder about. The idea is to follow the KISS principle and go with *one* single download button and make it a simple platform download. That's the minimum download requirement for Callisto and I'm very confident it will be the minimum download requirement for Europa, too. From there everything else is handled by the Update Manager. However, I think the overall design needs some more tuning. (In reply to comment #0) 1. Download Section * The download button looks boring. Come on, the "Download Firefox" button on Mozilla.com has been more appealing from its beginning. [<wink>see attachment 37415 [details]</wink>] * The links below the download button look like they are the odd one out. 2. I Use eclipse for I'm sorry for not getting into the Pillars discussion earlier. I know there is a bug for it, isn't there? IMHO the pillars fail if they are used to promote the Eclipse.org projects and that's what it looks like to me. For example, "Enterprise Development" looks like it is promoting webtools, "Embedded + Device Development" looks like it is there to promote DSDP and "Language IDE" looks like it is there to not forget about JDT and the rest. But all those three can be perfectly sumarized with ONE statement: "I use Eclipse as a development environment!" Isn't that the real pillar? In following this "out of the project scope" pattern I see the following "pillars": I Use Eclipse as * Development Environment (see above) * Administration & Management Tool (Application Lifecycle, Database Admins, BI Reporting, etc.) * Application & Tools Platform (RCP, RAP, GEF, EMF and all the other nice frameworks) And don't forget about the following pages, i.e. the pages where the pillars link to. IMHO it's not enough to make them a long list with much bold text and icons but without useful information, i.e. we should give a nice short description about the sections and about the listed projects. 3. Spotlight / Annoucements Section It doesn't look like a spotlight section. Perhaps it's too close to the surrounding sections and too less text compared to the bold headlines. 4. News Section I like this section but IMHO it's too bold. 5. Additional comments * The right navigation sections should start at the top. * Too much bold text * Too much thick lines * Too many lines * Be careful with the background gradients. The download background gradient already look very dominant * More spacing between sections * The top navigation bar needs a redesign (doesn't fit into the design IMHO, <wink>see attachment 37415 [details]</wink>, btw, I also like the Mylar skin) * My cup of coffee is empty Oh and BTW, take a look at www.netbeans.org. I don't know if that is accidential but they already gone live with a pattern similar to our pillars and announcement sections. Anyway, that page looks much more appealing (cleaner look, better structured, more readable) to me than our current prototype.
(In reply to comment #14) > * The download button looks boring. Come on, the "Download Firefox" button on > Mozilla.com has been more appealing from its beginning. [<wink>see attachment > 37415 [edit]</wink>] > * The links below the download button look like they are the odd one out. I actually like the download button you attached. However, we got feedback that the page had too many graphic treatments of the eclipse logo, so we remove the eclipse logo from the download button. Maybe we should put it back? > 2. I Use eclipse for > > I'm sorry for not getting into the Pillars discussion earlier. I know there is > a bug for it, isn't there? IMHO the pillars fail if they are used to promote > the Eclipse.org projects and that's what it looks like to me. For example, > "Enterprise Development" looks like it is promoting webtools, "Embedded + > Device Development" looks like it is there to promote DSDP and "Language IDE" > looks like it is there to not forget about JDT and the rest. But all those > three can be perfectly sumarized with ONE statement: "I use Eclipse as a > development environment!" Isn't that the real pillar? Have you looked at the Pillar pages? Enterprise developement would include much more than Web Tools. It would include things like BIRT, PHP IDE, JDT, WTP, DTP, etc. Same thing for embedded, it would include CDT, DSDP subprojects etc. > > In following this "out of the project scope" pattern I see the following > "pillars": > I Use Eclipse as > * Development Environment (see above) > * Administration & Management Tool (Application Lifecycle, Database Admins, BI > Reporting, etc.) > * Application & Tools Platform (RCP, RAP, GEF, EMF and all the other nice > frameworks) I think we need to provide more categories to make it easier for new comers to Eclipse. > > And don't forget about the following pages, i.e. the pages where the pillars > link to. IMHO it's not enough to make them a long list with much bold text and > icons but without useful information, i.e. we should give a nice short > description about the sections and about the listed projects. That is already included in each of the landing pages. btw, Great feedback!!! Thanks.
(In reply to comment #3) > I don't know how these categories > would get me to EMF for example. I would see EMF showing up in the RCP, Building Tools and Application Frameworks section >It seems kind of too platform centric rather > than a central place for all projects... > The idea is to make it very obvious to end users, especially new comers, how to download Eclipse.
(In reply to comment #15) > (In reply to comment #14) > > > * The download button looks boring. Come on, the "Download Firefox" button on > > Mozilla.com has been more appealing from its beginning. [<wink>see attachment > > 37415 [edit]</wink>] > > * The links below the download button look like they are the odd one out. > > I actually like the download button you attached. However, we got feedback > that the page had too many graphic treatments of the eclipse logo, so we remove > the eclipse logo from the download button. Maybe we should put it back? > > Agreed the attachment logo is nice, but that mockup was done in photoshop, not in HTML which presents its own challenges. Such as the slight blur / gradient fade around the logo, while it softens the logo and makes it look nice when you have it on static background. This would not be the case here, this image would need to be transparent. And would look awful. Taking the blue / gradient layer can be done but then the logo doesnt look "complete". Beleive me when i say i've spent a few hours in photoshop trying to make a button that looks nice, were getting close to a final button but were not there yet. Another point i'm driving at here is do we want the eclipse.org site to be a mozilla clone? We've used some of there ideas but i think if we make our site look exactly like their's we might as well stick with the old page.
Bug is not longer valid since this version of the page no longer exists See Bug 159588
Moving to Community/Website
